Cafe Indie becomes A CO-OP

Cafe INDIE announced last week that they intend to become a community funded and run venue. This means instead of being a Lottery funded project they would belong to the community. If you wish to help and support Cafe INDIE in this venture then keep reading to see how…

I’ll leave it to Cafe INDIE to explain below:

We are now… a CO-OP.
No, not the shop! The concept…
WE. ARE. A. CO-OP.
Becoming a co-operative is BIG. But what does it actually mean? It means very soon we’re launching a Membership Scheme. It means that because we’re a CO-OP our Members will own INDIE and our Members will have a say in the running of INDIE. That means YOU, if you want it…
You don’t get a lot of venues that set up, seem to do alright and then decide to give it away to their community. That’s pretty much exactly what we want to do. But let’s just make a very INDIE point, here… This place won’t suddenly be some exclusive club. You won’t HAVE to be a member to come in and have a drink or a good time. INDIE will still be an open place. It’ll still be for ANYBODY and EVERYBODY.
But we believe that if YOU believe in US – if you truly ‘get’ what INDIE is about and what it is that we’re doing – you’ll want to join up…
Imagine when you were little and you wanted to set up a club, a gang. Like, if you were an eight-year-old girl you’d call it The Girls Gang, ‘cos it’d be you and your mates in your shed that you call The Club-House. You’d even put some pretty lights in there to make it nice and cosy. Except, here, we’ve already set up The Club-House and the pretty lights are already up. We’ve done all the hard shit that you’d have to get your parents to do… You lot just get to join the gang!
Think about it… The Club-House could be whatever you want it to be, whatever your imagination says it is. It could just be your Café where you go with your kids or your wobbly grandmas. Or it could be your pub where you have a Brewdog with your mates. Or your wedding venue. Or the place you meet and knit. Or your LIVE music venue, for that sold out Cabbage gig. It could be ALL and ANY of these things – and it’s right on your doorstep. It’s in your home town. And you OWN a bit of it..?
We’d take that, big time. Wouldn’t you? So how does this INDIE Membership thing work?
Straight up, it does cost money. Real hard-earned pounds, though not so many. We’ve told you a bit about the financial side this week – and we don’t want to go ‘The Full Geldof’ – but we’ll make no bones about the fact that this Membership scheme could raise the much-needed moolah to plug that bit of a hole in our funding, and would help keep us going. But that is NOT its primary purpose. This is actually about YOU and US getting more intimate, getting a little bit closer.
We’ve put a LOT of thought into how we can do this to satisfy all, and we think we’ve come up with a fair pricing system. We’ve got three levels – but we’re NOT setting up a ‘class system’, just making the Membership scheme accessible to all. Everyone who signs up to be a Member will be equal to everyone else.

Membership costs £25 per year. There’s also a £10 level for the unwaged or students or pensioners.
And there’s also a £50 ‘BOOM!’ membership – exactly the same as the £25 membership and the £10 membership but for that extra bit you’ll get a special ‘merchandise pack’ (with a Café INDIE t-shirt, tote bag, mug, tea-towel, bar-blade, lock of our Plummers’s hair and various other lovely goodies).
If you don’t think any of that pricing is fair then you won’t buy a Membership – and we’ll respect that. Come on in still. You’ll be welcome. It’s our job to give you a reason to carry on coming in, isn’t it?
But INDIE is give-and-get… There are little Café-level perks for everyone who joins – like getting a bit of a discount on your coffee when you present your Membership Card. Oh yeah! We got proper cards and everything! We’ll tell you more about those sort of perks very soon.
As well as those little Café-level give-and-gets, there’s also the perk of involvement – the REAL give-and-get. Perhaps you’ve wanted to be more involved here but not known how. Even though we’re pretty friendly and pretty open people, INDIE might seem a difficult place to get deep into – just because there’s so much happening all the time and it can be a bit overwhelming.
If that’s the case for you, here’s what Membership can mean… A few times a year we’ll have a get-together. We’ll call it The Social… It’ll be a proper Members’ meeting, but there’ll also be a social element. It’ll be fun. We’ll talk about what’s happening with us and how things are going. Members will get to vote on big decisions that affect Café INDIE.

They’ll get a say in how your money is spent.
And as this’ll be one of those democratic affairs – not like the US election – there’ll be opportunities to get even more intimate than that, if the fancy takes you. Our Members will get the chance to stand for election to the Board of INDIE (if they want to). The rest of the Members will get to vote on whether they are or not.
It’s really important, at this point, to state that you’ll be joining something already established. We’re not starting from scratch, here. Because you believe in what this place stands for, it’s still the INDIE ideals and vision you’ll be subscribing to. This isn’t about ripping INDIE up and starting again. This is an evolution. Some things won’t change – our core values and founding principles. They’re sticking around. That’s why we told the story of INDIE this week. That was some of what’s happened here, and it was some of what we’ve learned, and it was an explanation of why we believe this thing can belong to everyone.
Perhaps you don’t really like the idea of that level of involvement. Maybe you already think what we do is pretty good and you want us guys to be open but we’re all a bit too weird. Or you like what we do but you can’t get too involved ‘cos, you know… hello! LIFE..! You just wish you could chip in a little bit here and there. Or you just want to come in to the Café and grab a coffee and enjoy the scenery. That’s still being a member, you still count.
So there you have it. We’ve announced it. And we’ve actually planned things out quite nicely. We’ve organised a series of information events, so we can get a bit deeper with you about things. Tell you more. This is when they are…

THE DAYTIME INFO EVENT is for the daytime Café folk. It’s Saturday 21st January, at 2 – 4pm.THE EVENING INFO EVENT is for Café folks who are busy during the day. It’ll be the same as the daytime event, but… in the evening. That’s on Wednesday 25th January at 7 – 9pm.THE ACTUAL LAUNCH EVENT… It’s Saturday 28th January. That day is when we officially launch as a CO-OP. That day is the first chance you’ll get to sign up to become a Member – and there’s a BIG night with our favourite bands to celebrate. We’ve got SIEVEHEAD, FIGHTING CARAVANS and DEJA VEGA and it’s going to be a massive party. We called it LAUNCH for a reason. Get it? Tickets are on sale right here right now. Join us to welcome in the next bit of our story…
If this works we’ve got our own little feel-good tear-jerker, right here in Scunthorpe. If this works we won’t be a Big Lottery project. We’ll be a proper community project. If this works we’ll be OWNED and RUN by our community. FOR our community.
Hopefully this little word we’re about to use is going to become a whole lot bigger – it’ll be that WE made it happen. Let’s… CO-OP.

To celebrate the launch why not join the cafe at their celebratory gig.